ALPHAVILLE

Where the sun never comes up

ALPHAVILLE

Where the sun never comes up

This series is shot in Paris suburbs, far from glamourous parties. Nothing is staged here, but sun never comes up…

Started in 2015, it’s a continuing series.

It came from a strange undercurrent in the air in Paris these days. Sometimes it feels like reality progressed far beyond the future predicted in old dystopian movies. To pay homage to that, the name “Alphaville” is token from Jean-Luc Godard’s Noir-film classic Alphaville (1965).

This series is shot in Paris suburbs, far from glamourous parties. Nothing is staged here, but sun never comes up…

Started in 2015, it’s a continuing series.

It came from a strange undercurrent in the air in Paris these days. Sometimes it feels like reality progressed far beyond the future predicted in old dystopian movies. To pay homage to that, the name “Alphaville” is token from Jean-Luc Godard’s Noir-film classic Alphaville (1965).

Godard’s movie shows an Orwellian world: it is shot in and around the futuristic architecture that dots the city. Nothing from the movie was shot in a studio—everything took place around real buildings. It is a dark and brooding film: the city is portrayed as a machine where everything turns and repeats ceaselessly, everything is computed. The only way the hero found to get away from it, is to go beyond logic and look what makes a human be human, find what cannot be computed : soul, poetry or whatever it can be called.

This what this photo series is about : this is not finding beauty in an ugly reality, it’s trying to stay human in this machine.

Godard’s movie shows an Orwellian world: it is shot in and around the futuristic architecture that dots the city. Nothing from the movie was shot in a studio—everything took place around real buildings. It is a dark and brooding film: the city is portrayed as a machine where everything turns and repeats ceaselessly, everything is computed. The only way the hero found to get away from it, is to go beyond logic and look what makes a human be human, find what cannot be computed : soul, poetry or whatever it can be called.

This what this photo series is about : this is not finding beauty in an ugly reality, it’s trying to stay human in this machine.

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ALPHAVILLE

By LENSCULTURE
Unstaged, dystopian photographs from the streets of Paris: As with Godard’s Alphaville or George Orwell’s 1984, there is a predictive prescience in these photographs along with descriptive clarity.

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